If you want to buy that particular bike, then you buy that bike. We’re not judging you (any more).
On a recent road trip with my wife to visit distant family, our paths crossed with that of Jeff Lockwood (former editor of grit.cx of this parish and long-time Belgium resident). On the day we were leaving Antwerp, Jeff was going to be doing a ’cross race at a venue in line with our travel, so we said we’d swing by and cheer him on, as it was on the way.
It was a low-key, local event, with a few dozen competitors and similar numbers of spectators; a far cry from the World Cup racing we’d all watched the day before. The weather was pleasant enough, and the venue was a partly wooded blueberry farm, complete with visitor centre and all-important café.
The mellow and friendly vibe of the event invited a bit of good-natured heckling, which the locals seemed to enjoy in contrast to the usual silence of 30 racers going round a wooded circuit. After I’d exhausted the usual positive cheers of ‘Come on, Jeff!’ ‘Pump the big meat!’ and ‘Unleash the beast!’, I changed tack to less inspirational ones, like ‘But you said you were fast!’ and the one that raised a few smiles: ‘That bike deserves better!’ – something I’d been heckled with myself with at a Scottish ’cross race and which had stuck.
And while it’s a funny thing to shout at friends who you know won’t take it to heart, it did get me thinking about why we buy the bikes we do and why we ride the bikes we do. It’s unheard of that a rider will think, ‘OK, I have achieved enduro/cross-country/downhill greatness using sub-par gear, I think that I now deserve to get a bike of the appropriate spec and quality.’
No one does that. We’re always over-reaching a little (or a lot) when we’re shopping for a bike. Just as our parents might have bought us a too-big bike, claiming (and hoping) that we’d grow into it, so our early bike purchases are based on dreams of the future and of a greater, better us. ‘If I get this newer, lighter, racier bike, then I too will become racier and faster’ is how the thinking goes. We might be inspired by a talented friend to level up our bike game to try to compete, or a pro-racer might look so smooth and slick on their bike that buying their brand is our way of getting close to their greatness. And in later years, we can buy a new bike because we want that new-bike inspiration.
Sometimes it actually works. A fresh bike can inspire you to get out and ride more. A more capable bike will get you closer to your potential, and a more appropriate bike for your chosen discipline should be better at doing that corner of the sport. Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t work at all – and I still remember buying a dirt jump BMX in the misguided belief that it would help me to finally get my wheels off the ground. Needless to say, it didn’t.
And there will always be great riders who make do with what they have, and they’ll beat you up and down the hills on bald tyres and ineffective brakes, while you buy better and better machines to try to keep up.
But does it matter? Do you really deserve that bike? Of course you do. Does that bike deserve better? Rubbish! We all revel in a sport where a perfect day out often involves riding in a large circle with some friends, falling off a couple of times, nearly falling off a dozen more times, and all so we can swap tired smiles and stories at the end of the day.
Modern race-derived mountain bikes are designed to excel at the highest levels of competition. That doesn’t mean that they all need to be raced. Cue comparisons of top speeds un-reached in cars and unfulfilled stadium gigs dreamed of by average players with fancy guitars. Just because a product was designed to excel at racing doesn’t mean it needs to ever see those speeds. It just means that it’s going to be absolutely excellent, whatever speed we ride them at.
And if we happen to catch a floating mote of talent, one sunny afternoon when the trails are perfect, and the wind is at our backs, we’ll know that the brakes can (finally) be let off and we can see what this baby can do. Bikes don’t ride themselves, and the greatest of bikes is nothing without the rider.
Now go and be that rider – at whatever damn speed you want.